If you thought I made a hash of the shortbread recipe...

Some time ago I saw the lovely film Julie and Julia. Now it has been 6 weeks since I read my bloglines so have no idea what others are up to (I will remedy this over the weekend!)


I have been pondering the Beef Burgundy which is lauded in the film, and decided that tonight I will cook it for Mr BB along with lashings of buttery mashed potato.

Here begin-eth the Drama.

Googled the recipe - easy. Start the conversions. It is now that I remember that Australian metric conversions are not the same as around the world. Will this impact on the result? Does this mean that all table- and tea-spoon amounts need converting too? A quick clickety trip to Wikipedia informs me that yes, this is the case. In fact Mr Wiki tells me there is "no internationally-agreed standard definition of the cup, whose modern volume ranges between 200-284ml). The cup sizes generally used in the many Commonwealth countries and the U.S differ by up to 44ml."

Am I just making things hard for myself? (Clearly yes), however what if the recipe fails spectacularly due to too much (or too little) liquid?!

Surely this can be easy I think. I am over-thinking this.

A 6 ounce piece of chunk bacon is 170g. 3 pounds of stewing beef is 1.36kg (call it 1.4kg). So 3 cups of red wine (Julia Childs specifies a young and full-bodied red) is.... conversion chart at the ready...

1 US cup = 237ml
1 US 'legal' cup = 240ml
1 imperial cup = 284ml.

240 x 3 = 720ml
284 x 3 =852ml.

132ml difference...

OK I think. Start over. Australian tablespoon 20ml, American 15ml. Hmm.

It is at this point that I think I will visit a bookshop and see if the modern incantation of the cookbook is metric or imperial. For the sake of $40 and my sanity (and YOUR sanity), and of course Mr BB's belly, I'll buy the frigging book!

NB: the only measurement that is the same in Australia/NZ/US/Canada/UK is a teaspoon, which we all agree is 5ml! Trivia for the day!.

x

Well overdue update...

So clearly the Christmas season is well and truly gone, decorations are down, mince pies all eaten! I have had several questions from friends about The Shortbread Outcome.

Derelict as the laptop has been over the past month, I have blown off the dust and return; hopefully more regularly; to the realm of writing and sharing that is this blog!

I took The Shortbread very seriously. So seriously that It Never Got Made. kid you not. I got totally bogged down in my research. I had columns and charts, I interviewed devotees (both in eating and baking), and analysed my own results. I took notes of tips, ingredient annotations and different methods. I was warned off by an elderly officianado who told me that in Canberra shortbread never works well unless you have air conditioning. It's too hot/dry/dusty/etc apparently. Who knew? This was corobborated by another friend who had the same experience.

After all the brilliant investigations, it was Christmas Eve, and I didn't have the half salted and half un-salted butter receommended by Margaret Fulton, so chickened out.

There. I admitted it. Part of the reason for not posting for so long was the shame!!! Maybe now the pressure is off I can bake to my hearts' content...

j

Mince Pies

MMMmince pies. Fabulous part of the pre-Christmas dance. I only got to mine yesterday after having the ingredients on the bench for 2 weeks!

Tradition has it that if you eat 12 mince pies over Advent, you will have twelve months of good luck and good health. I am certainly trying to get a year of good health!

These are an annual tradition for me. My dearest old buddy and I have been making them for years. The story goes that JR and her Mum were having afternoon tea at the Windsor Hotel in '98 and asked the pastry chef for his recipe for the brilliant pastry. The filling is suited to us - you can modify it to your own taste!

Pastry:
250g softened unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
1 egg
60ml milk (full cream)
500g plain flour

Beat butter and icing sugar until well-combined. Add egg and milk and lastly flour.

Do not overwork. Pop in fridge at least 2 hours wrapped in cling wrap.

Filling:
2 jars of MacRobertson's fruit mince
1 packet chopped, dried apricots
100g currants

I like a pastry star over the mince mixture as a "lid", or you can dust them with icing sugar, or leave them plain.

No need to do any blind baking - just roll, cut into rounds, cook in greased patty pan tins until lightly golden in moderate oven.

CHEAT: If you would rather stick pins in your eyes than make pastry, pampas do a passable shortcrust pastry case (in frozen section of the supermarket) which is easier but not as tasty as the above recipe. There are 12 in a pack, and retail for $5-$6 (making pastry is MUCH cheaper).

YUM!

Christmas Pudding

Do you make your own Christmas Pudding?
Plum duff?
Pud?

Are you a steam-it-in-the-cloth or a pudding bowl type?

Brandy cream? Custard? Ice cream? Whipped cream? Plain? Lit with brandy? Hot? Cold slices for days afterwards?

What's your tradition?

My Nan came from quite a background. For years, Nan made the pudding based on a recipe from their cook/house-keeper (is that right Mum?)

It was always boiled in a pudding cloth, and hung with its pals (there were usually three or four), on a broom handle in the spare room. When Mum got our pudding from Nan it was hung on a nail in a rafter of the kitchen roof.

This "hanging" of the pudding has always been part of the mystery and tradition of the pudding for our family. The whiff of pudding, the allure of knowing what lies within the calico folds, all part of the process.

This will be the first year that I have made a pudding by myself, as we will remain in Canberra for Christmas. We have always been with the family, but this year, for many reasons, we are staying put.

Mr BB and I could not conceive of a Christmas without a pudding. He comes from the pudding bowl set, I hail from the cloth. I readied myself for the challenge.

I set myself up by purchasing and setting out all the ingredients, worrying that it was beyond my skill-set, and trying to remember the pudding-making sessions of my childhood.

Packet-suet versus the real thing ordered from the butcher? (they grate it for you to make it easier);
What size pudding cloth? Did Nan halve the recipe or double it?
What was the method again? She did it by feel so often...

After all my careful calculations, measurements, and planning, the Great Pudding cook-up took FOUR DAYS to complete.

Not only did I forget to add ingredients, my bowl was far too small to mix it, and my stock pot too small to cook it!

Once we got it all together, Mum was here for a visit, so the process became even more special. Mum, myself, and Miss 2 used Nan's recipe and created (hopefully) a magnificent pudding.


Mum and I were both quite emotional, remembering Nan, enjoying Miss 2 spooning the mix into the opened and floured cloth (licking the spoon, the bench, her fingers...)


The job was made much easier and more pleasurable by Mum being here. The smell of the cooking pudding was amazing, the whole process fantastic.



Finally it has been hung, and will be cooked again Christmas morning. Even if we are sweltering in the heat, it will boil for several hours. And if it fails to work out? We will slather it with ice-cream, cream and custard, and eat it anyway!



This week's baking task - Mince pies! Stay tuned.

j

Welcome to the house of fun...

Master 6 wanted help making biscuits (cookies) on the weekend. When they were cool he iced them.

I boiled the kettle and got ready for a cuppa to go with my bikkie, thinking what a great . That's when I saw this:

The kid who sells his paper planes now sells snacks!


He's sold them all (to me, his dad, and his Grandma), except for the freebies he gifted to Miss 2 ("she's got no money yet Mum!").

Gotta love the little man. The money went towards his latest Lego purchase.

Master 6 in the kitchen

When Master 6 hits the kitchen, some interesting discoveries are made. This weekend we farewelled Winter with a huge batch of buttermilk pancakes. We don't measure anything, but throw in self-raising flour, an egg, and most of a 600ml carton of buttermilk, and if we remember, some vanilla extract. Out with the whisk, and off we go.

He likes it how he likes it, and likes three, with butter and jam. There is never any deviation from this. Never. Until this weekend.

Him: "I want vegemite on mine".

Me: "vegemite isn't really a pancake food honey, maybe just a scrape, just to try".

Him: "Nah, I want lots."

When we say lots, we mean thick.


Bless his heart, he ate it, said he felt sick, and retired to his room. When he emerged, he told us that the experiment didn't work so well...

Back to jam!

Cooking for the crowd

Yesterday was the weekly market at The Old Bus Depot in Kingston, here in Canberra.

We went specifically to get some magnificent Fairtrade coffee from Wagonga Coffee, but to get to the coffee stall, we first had to walk past strawberries, jams, breads, and all manner of great produce...

This 'Cranky Pants' Quince jelly was $7 a jar but so, so good. In fact we are all besotted. 24 hours after its purchase, there's only half a jar left! No website, but highly recommended if you ever spy it.

So when we got home, I was motivated to cook for the hungry hoardes.

A vege soup with both lentils and chickpeas for substance, and a little moroccan spice for tang. Magnificent with wood-fired bread from the market.


Also a pasta sauce, with onion, garlic, bacon, tomato, spinach, and some herbs. Best. Ever. Pasta.


After a yummy dinner, I settled down to knit, and planned some aprons for a friend's daughters.

A great Sunday. What did you do?

j

Kym's Savoury Muffins

An Amazing Woman I Know is a mother to three under 3 (one set of twins), volunteers for the local SES, and does many other things, including baking. She is famous for these, which I highly recommend:

Kym’s Savoury Muffins

1 ½ cups Self Raising Flour

1 cup grated cheese (well packed)

1 cup chopped cooked bacon

1 onion finely diced and fried

200g tomato paste

4 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp powdered chicken stock

2 tsp crushed garlic (or to taste)

¼ cup oil

½ cup milk

1 egg

The ingredients above are all approximate measures only. Vary the amounts to your own taste. The tomato paste is about 1/3 of a large jar – there is no need to weigh it. I often put in more cheese and bacon than above.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

• Combine the flour, cheese, bacon, onion, sugar, chicken stock and garlic in a large bowl and mix together.
• Combine the tomato paste, oil, milk and egg in another bowl and beat together with a fork.
• Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ones and mix together thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
• The mixture should be the thickness of a usual muffin mix – not as runny as a cake mix, but still moist.
• Spoon into a muffin tin, mini muffin tin, mini quiche tin or in doubled patty pans.
• Cook in preheated oven until top springs back when lightly pressed. This will take approx the times below, depending on the size of the tin used.

Tin	Approx. Time
Mini Muffin	11 mins
Mini Quiche	15 mins
Patty Pans	18 mins
Muffin	20 mins

• Cool slightly before removing from tin. (they will be quite soft when warm due to the melted cheese, but will harden when cooled)
• Eat warm or cold.

Kym has used many variations including:

• ham and spring onion to avoid frying bacon and onion
• crab and sun dried tomato (leave out tomato paste)
• Chilli and Corn (leave out tomato paste and use creamed corn and corn kernels)
• Green and red capsicum (with powdered vegetable stock)
• Curry paste and coriander (cilantro).

j

Mum's Sticky Date Pudding for Lois

I am more than happy Lois to provide you with Mum's sticky date pudding recipe. It is delicious. The secret is that mum does hers in an old, lidded, pudding steamer. This steamer has magical powers and produces brilliant results. I have memories of a long-ago jam pudding in this steamer. Mmm. I could each steamed pudding EVERY night.....!

Please note that Australian Metric Measurements vary slightly from USA and UK ones. This article cleverly discusses and summarises this.

"The moist, sticky texture is as important as the taste of this nostalgic pudding. The sauce should be poured over the top when the pudding comes out of the oven so that a little seeps into the cake and forms a glaze on top. Serves 6.

185g dates, pitted and cut into small, even pieces (I use my kitchen scissors to do this)
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 cup boiling water
45g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup self raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Sticky caramel sauce:
3/4 cup brown sugar
45g unsalted butter, cut into tiny pieces
1/2 cup cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Grease a cake tin about 16-17cm square or 6 ramekins and preheat oven to 180 degrees.

(Mum cooks hers as a steamed pudding, in a steamer, in a saucepan of boiling water for about 45 minutes, then she turns it out and immediately covers it with 1/3 of the sauce).

Pour the boiling water over the dates and stir in the bicarb soda. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar.

Beat in eggs, one at a time.

Sift the flour over the top and add vanilla and dates, stirring well. The mixture will be quite wet.

Pour into prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes, or until just firm to the touch on top. It is important not to over-cook it.

To make the sauce: put all ingredients into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer very gently for around 3 minutes, then serve over squares or wedges of date pudding with thick cream. The sauce can be reheated.

Yum.

j

Vanilla Ice Cream

Hubby is very talented in the kitchen when the ice cream machine is out. This was a wedding present 10 or so years ago, and he is the only one who uses it!



I Love Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. He made this batch to complement Mum's Sticky Date Pudding on the weekend. Magnificent mutual appreciation society!



x

RED is so vibrant in the kitchen:

My neighbour brought over some plums from his tree, which was so thoughtful and generous, and I wanted to make jam to say thank you.

There just weren't enough though, and it was really more fiddly than I thought (stone them, peel them, put stones in a muslin pouch, etc). I am not really very patient and wanted to Do It NOW, so stewed the plums, sieved them to remove stones, added a tired apple that was lurking at the bottom of the fruit bowl, some strawberries that Master 5 had forgotten about, and a few handfuls of raspberries from the freezer. A simple crumble topping:

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons self-raising flour
melted butter to cover it all

and ate it with Hubby's home-made vanilla ice-cream, cream, and custard...

DIVINE